Bangkok Special

Bangkok Special

2 oz. 10 Cane Rum
3/4 oz. ginger beer
1/2 tsp honey
2 sprigs of mint
2 drops Sriracha

Combine all ingredients and shake. Serve on the rocks, garnished with more mint.

Yale Cocktail

Yale Cocktail

2 oz. Plymouth gin
1/2 oz. dry vermouth
1/2 oz. crème de violette
1 dash Angostura bitters

Camberville

Camberville

3 oz. Harpoon Summer
2 oz. Privateer True American Rum
1 oz. St. Elder liqueur

Serve with ice.

We have a good local distillery scene in New England, but the brewery world is a force to be reckoned with. That meant I played with beer and cider cocktails quite a lot during my local-ingredients challenge.

Harpoon's summer ale was nice and refreshing on its own. Add rum for body and elderflower liqueur for complexity (and, admittedly, a bit of sugar), and you've got a relaxing long drink for mid-July.

St. Elder is produced in Somerville, Mass., which is what inspired the name. "Camberville" is the nickname for the area along the Cambridge-Somerville border - which, as any map will tell you, is about as arbitrary a line as you can get.

St. Elder, while we're on the topic, is of comparable quality with the better-known St. Germain, but retails for half the price. I think it actually pairs better with aged spirits than its pricier cousin does. If they sell it in your area, I highly recommend getting a bottle.

Niagara Wine

Niagara Wine

1 1/2 oz. Hennessy Cognac
1/4 oz. Luxardo maraschino
1 tsp Welch’s white grape/peach juice
1 dash Scrappy’s cardamom bitters

Stir. Serve chilled but neat.

A response to the Welch’s white grape/peach juice ingredient challenge, and a reminder that a very little bit of fruit juice is all you need in a cocktail. Substituting straight peach or white grape juice, or something similar, like white cranberry juice, should work just as well.

One more thing this drink reminds us is that Scrappy’s cardamom bitters go with everything. (Find them here: http://scrappysbitters.com/cardamon/)

.406

.406

Combine equal parts Bully Boy American Straight Whiskey and Moxie in a rocks glass, with ice. Stir in a drizzle of fresh rhubarb syrup.

The drink is named in honor of Ted Williams, who, like E.B. White and Calvin Coolidge, loved him some Moxie.

Bully Boy’s American Straight Whiskey isn’t quite a bourbon or a rye, being 40% corn, 40% rye, and 20% barley, last I heard. What it is, is delicious. It stands up against other flavors like a rye but is smoother drinking than most bourbons are. It’s one of the few whiskies I’d be prepared to pair with Moxie and rhubarb, simultaneously; most others would either taste foul (hello, Scotch) or get drowned out completely.

Bully Boy makes a whole line of spirits right here in Boston. The skinny is here: http://www.bullyboydistillers.com/bully-boy-american-straight-whiskey.html

Outre-Mer

Outre-Mer

6 parts Rhum Barbancourt
1 part Kassatly Ajyal tamarind syrup
1/2 part Grand Marnier

Stir briskly to keep the syrup from settling. Serve neat.

My neighbor got his hands on some tamarind syrup, and had absolutely no idea what to do with it. “Here, Cocktail Guy,” he said, “You figure it out.” Thus was born the tamarind ingredient challenge, and consequently the Outre-Mer.

I christened it after the French name for their lingering colonial outposts (the name means, “Overseas”), because the ingredients are French, Haitian, and Lebanese. Other dark rums will also work, but there’s a rich smokiness to the Barbancourt that makes the whole combination taste more exotic.

An addition I came up with later was a single dash of Scrappy’s cardamom bitters (available here: http://scrappysbitters.com/cardamon/), which I’ve found to blend nicely with any individual spirit and more liqueurs than you’d think. This is a perfect milieu for them.

Jen Rose

Jen Rose

1 1/2 oz. Berkshire Mountain’s Greylock Gin
1/2 oz. cranberry syrup
1/4 oz. lime juice

Shake with ice and serve neat.

A gin spin on the Jack Rose, created as a test drive for homemade cranberry syrup. This was one of my earliest ideas for a locally-sourced ingredient substitution, taking the place of grenadine. Properly, grenadine is sweetened, boiled-down pomegranate juice. Cranberries have the same tart, bitter palate pomegranates do; I haven’t yet found a cocktail in which you can’t substitute one for the other.

This of course means you can make a Jen Rose with grenadine, too.

Proposition 3-17 →

My personal favorite thing about Guinness: that they spent two years actively campaigning to make St. Patrick’s Day a U.S. federal holiday. It’s called Proposition 3-17, and while they seem to have given up on making it a reality, that’s no excuse for the rest of us to treat today as a day off. Particularly in Boston, where Evacuation Day conveniently coincides with St. Paddy’s Day.

Vieux Carré

Vieux Carré (dry)

1 oz. rye whiskey
1 oz. Cognac
1 oz. dry vermouth
2 barspoons Bénédictine
2 dashes Angostura bitters
2 dashes Peychaud’s bitters

Stir before adding bitters. Serve neat or with ice, as you prefer.

I’ve been wanting to put this one up for a while. I made these left, right, and center while Mardi Gras was upon us, but they were going down so fast I never got a photo of one. Until now!

"Vieux Carré" is the French name for what Anglophones would call the French Quarter, New Orleans’s oldest, most famous neighborhood. The Vieux Carré is not New Orleans’s most famous cocktail, that honor probably falling to the Sazerac, but it was invented there, at the Carousel Bar of the Hotel Monteleone.

This is a nice cocktail in that all of the recipes are very similar. It’s not quite as formulaic as the Negroni, but it’s reasonably easy to get in your head. Start with equal parts of whiskey, brandy and vermouth. Add a spoonful or so of Bénédictine, then top with equal parts of Angostura and Peychaud’s (ordinarily one or two dashes). All the recipes I’ve seen for the Vieux Carré can be described like this, although they quibble over the precise numbers. Mine is more Bénédictine-heavy than most, but, hey, I like Bénédictine.

The Vieux Carré is most commonly found with sweet vermouth. I have to credit Ted Haigh’s Vintage Spirits and Forgotten Cocktails with the knowledge that it can be made with the dry stuff as well. It’s a perfect one-for-one substitution. That’s not always the case - Jon and I had to do a lot more doctoring when we tried to make a dry Americano. But in this case, don’t stress about your vermouth. I just use whichever I feel like that day, or in this case, happen to have on hand.

According to Haigh, this drink had been forgotten at the Carousel Bar itself, until very recently. I’m happy to report that this is no longer the case. The Carousel Bar is, in fact, where I first met the Vieux Carré, during Tales of the Cocktail in 2012.

Peychaud’s Bitters

Very happy to announce I’ve gone out and gotten myself a bottle of Peychaud’s. It’s about time - they’ve been around for two hundred years.

Peychaud’s is the signature bitters of New Orleans, and is essential in both the Sazerac (whose namesake company now produces the bitters) and the Vieux Carré. Followers of the blog may remember a version of that second drink I put up a while back, substituting cardamom bitters for the Peychaud’s. That’ll work in a pinch, but it’s not the same.

Peychaud’s’s flavor profile (there’s got to be a better way to render that possessive) hits anise and cherry notes most strikingly. In addition to being a storied bitters that is often specifically called for, it makes a fun variation for Old Fashioneds, Manhattans, or really anything that calls for bitters. I’m going to enjoy playing around with it.

2013 Summer Cocktail Series Kickoff

I promised to fill in some old favorites when I started this, so here are some highlights from the 2013 Summer Cocktail Series. Now that the weather’s turned, it felt appropriate to start putting up bright, cheery pictures.

The theme was drinking locally, so everything possible was sourced in New England, including and especially the spirits. I allowed myself reasonable exceptions for citrus, spices, sugar (sometimes), and fancy foreign liqueurs without local equivalents (rarely).

This is just a shot of the arsenal. The recipes will come after.

Plate: The Winter Pimm's Cocktail

Plate No. 2, featuring Pimm’s No. 1: the return of the Winter Pimm’s Cocktail. The volumes given for both this and the Bee’s Knees are for two people. Or one person drinking a double.

Plate: The Bee's Knees

Here’s something fun to kick off the week: decorative plates for HCS recipes! We’re going to have these for a lot of the drinks we post going forward, but we’re back-filling a little to get started. Enjoy the Bee’s Knees, rendered in pen and ink!

Levantine Martini

Levantine Martini

2 oz. Boodles gin
1/2 oz. Noilly Prat dry vermouth
1/4 oz. Kassatly Ajyal Lebanese tamarind syrup
Twist of orange

It amazes me, in hindsight, that this wasn’t the first thing I thought of when that bottle of tamarind syrup walked through my door. Truth be told, it came to me because I was trying to devise a drink as visually interesting as the Yale in a different color palette. It isn’t quite, but it’s tasty enough that I don’t mind.

This result should be surprising to no one. Both this and the Yale are essentially variations on the classic Martini, and this one hews much closer to a Martini flavor. The tamarind hits sour and savory notes, both of which complement the gin and vermouth that are the cocktail’s bread and butter. In the Martini, you ordinarily get one or the other: a twist of lemon, or a cocktail olive.

Someday I’d like to visit a bar where the “Martini Menu” contains nothing but honest-to-God members of the Martini family. The Yale, the Vesper, the Martinez, the Gibson - it’s a surprisingly robust group, and there’s still more that can be done with it. Unfortunately the market for such a place is on the small side. Do let me know if you find one.

Paloma

Paloma

2 oz 1800 Silver Tequila
Juice of 1/2 lime
Pinch of coarse salt
Fill with San Pellegrino pompelmo (grapefruit) soda
Plop rind of juiced lime into cocktail as garnish

Followers of the blog may remember the Paloma (Spanish for “dove”) from an ingredient challenge a while back. That time, you got a few informational links about the Paloma as a vehicle for Fresca. This time, we had San Pellegrino’s grapefruit soda on hand, and decided to make some ourselves.

The drink is very refreshing and ridiculously easy to make, accounting for its alleged popularity in Mexico. After one whiff of the tequila and grapefruit, I knew Wondrich had been right about the salt (see below). It balances out the tequila-citrus palate, just like it does in the Margarita and the familiar ritual of the tequila shot. Wondrich does call the drink “salty,” among other things, but if the salt flavor is particularly obvious, you’ve probably used too much.

Grapefruit affects the way things get absorbed by your body, meaning Palomas are more powerful than you might expect at first. They’ve also got a pretty high acid content to take on an empty stomach. In short, they’re not really brunch drinks. They’re siesta drinks.

Here’s the Wondrich write-up from Esquire, previously referred to:
http://www.esquire.com/drinks/la-paloma-drink-recipe#wondrich

Sidecar

Sidecar

4 parts (2 oz.) Courvoisier cognac
1 part (1/2 oz.) Cointreau
1 part (1/2 oz.) fresh-squeezed lemon juice
Sugar rim

This is where that lemon juice I mentioned went. The Sidecar may well be my favorite of the classic recipes. It’s also one of a very small number of drinks I consider to be “solved” - that is, I’ve found a way to make them that I like so much, I see no reason to deviate.

Courvoisier is far and away the best cocktail cognac. Hennessy, its closest cousin in terms of quality, has a harsh bite to it that relegates it to use in brandy/rye and brandy/bourbon cocktails, which are already covering a parallel trait in the whiskey. Courvoisier retails in the low thirties.

Cointreau is an orange liqueur with a neutral base. Most bars use it for their Sidecars. If you have your own orange liqueur, feel free to substitute it. Luxardo’s triple sec, Solerno blood orange liqueur, and the inimitable Grand Marnier all make pleasant Sidecar variations, although you should note that the substitution is not as easy in most drinks, particularly in the case of Grand Marnier. (Thus, “inimitable.”)

With a drink like this, so simple and with so few ingredients, always use fresh lemon juice. I tell people a drink is never better than its worst ingredient. Sometimes you can get away with a weak link, if it’s a bit player in the act. Here you can’t.

I recommend shaking for the Sidecar. It’s advisable for all drinks with fruit juices in them, to be sure everything distributes evenly. The bit of water from the melting ice also opens up the flavor of certain spirits, including brandy. All that said, you can stir this one without too much worry.

The eternal Sidecar question is, “Sugared rim?” The answer may be yes or no. Certainly you shouldn’t be afraid of it. The sugar is there to answer the sour of the fresh lemon. The drink works without it, but sometimes you’re in the right mood. If you’re worried you’ll look girly drinking out of a sugar-rimmed glass, stick to Old Fashioneds until you’re secure in your masculinity. The rest of you, keep reading.

To sugar a glass, pour some powdered or granulated sugar into a small dish or saucer. Please be sure your dish is larger than the glass you intend to coat, and your sugar isn’t in clumps. Chill the glass in the freezer for a few minutes. When you take it out, there will be condensation on it. Overturn the glass into the dish of sugar, and give it a few turns. The sugar will stick to the wet rim of the glass. Something similar may be accomplished by filling the glass temporarily with ice cubes to chill it, or by running a bit of lemon around the rim. So long as it’s wet, the sugar will stick.

This works any time you need to sugar a glass, or salt one, if you’re making Margaritas. Assuming all your dishes and glassware are clean, you can even return the leftover sugar to its container when you’re finished. Or revel in the decadence of pitching it. Up to you.

Martini

Martini

5 parts (1 1/4 oz.) Booths London dry gin
2 parts (1/2 oz.) Noilly Prat dry vermouth
Twist of lemon

Drink No. 2 in the rundown of Embury’s basic/classic cocktails is the Martini. If the Manhattan is the most accessible, the Martini is probably the least. Most people who drink “Martinis” or [word]-tinis would balk at the big glass of gin that is an actual Martini. The Herzog Cocktail School offers counter-instruction.

There are many kinds of gin, with different production processes and resulting flavor palates. For the purposes of cocktail mixing, I find it useful to describe three types: dry, herbal, and neutral. Dryness is a flavor you become accustomed to when you drink a lot of gin. If you haven’t experienced it, “un-sweet” is probably the best footing to put you on. It tends to feel boozy, and heavy, relative to other gins.

Herbal gins are your Botanists and Hendrick’ses. They have a really powerful flavor of herbs and spices. “Botanical” is the more prevalent term among aficionadoes, but calling Botanist gin “botanical” doesn’t seem particularly helpful. Neutral gins don’t jump out either way. They may be slightly citric, a little sweet, or a little more juniper-y. They’re your most versatile base for gin cocktails.

Booths is not a neutral gin. It is a very dry gin, as will be anything labelled “London dry.” In a dry-gin Martini, you want to be very careful there’s enough vermouth to offer a counterpoint. In general, between 3:1 and 7:1 gin:vermouth is a reasonable proportion for the Martini, making our 5:2 a little off the vermouthy side. Trust me when I say the gin needed it. Cocktails are a game of balances.

The classic Martini question is not, in fact, “Vodka or gin?” but, “Olive or twist?” Another way to put this is, “Savory or sour?” Which direction to bring the drink in? The Martini has many cousins which wrestle with the same issue. I opted for the twist of lemon, chiefly because I had lemons but no cocktail olives. Both are valid. The lemon version is a crisper drink, the olive one heavier. Dirty Martinis, which incorporate the olive juice, are heaviest of all.

Incidental note: I haven’t got a citrus zester, unlike our friends at Don’t Blame the Gin. I improvised the twist you see there, by cutting a lemon in half, and shaving off the rind around the edge with the knife, cutting away any fruity bits when I was done. Not too shabby a job, if I say so myself.

What happened to the rest of the lemon, you ask? Check the next update to find out…

Old Fashioned

Old Fashioned

2 oz. Bully Boy American Straight Whiskey
1/2 or so tsp Demerara simple syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters

The Old Fashioned is the original cocktail. When the word “cocktail” was coined, it referred to a combination of a spirit, sugar, water, and bitters. In the way that Sour, Flip, Fizz, Daisy, Fix, Crusta, and so on are drink categories characterized by particular formulas, so, originally, was Cocktail.

Ordinarily, I encourage the shaking of drinks that feature syrups, but the Old Fashioned has been around longer than cocktail shakers, I say stir. It’s a rough drink, rough in the sense that Teddy Roosevelt was rough. It’s nearly all whiskey. Careful measurements and advanced mixological techniques don’t belong here.

Old Fashioneds historically were made with rye, then with bourbon for many years, and now with rye again. Rye is more complex nine times out of ten, which matters a lot when the flavor palate you’re working with comes 85% or so from the whiskey. I used Bully Boy’s American Straight Whiskey (distilled in Boston!), which is made from a mash halfway between a bourbon and a rye mash. The result is very interesting and very smooth - smoother even than a lot of bourbons, which are allegedly the sweeter American whiskey. Whatever you use to mix these, be sure it’s of decent quality, and you enjoy it. Your particular whiskey selection should be one you would sip on its own.

There is a newer school of Old Fashioneds that involves muddled fruit. These can be enjoyable, but yield a distinctly different drinking experience. I’ll cover them some other time. For now, our foray into Embury’s basic/classic cocktails is concluded. The Daiquiri and the Jack Rose will follow eventually.

Finally, a shout-out to Jon, whose Demerara simple syrup was the sugar I had on hand for this. Demerara has a rich flavor, and makes a syrup that’s almost black. It blends very well with aged liquors.

Manhattan

Manhattan

3 parts (1.5 oz.) Old Overholt rye whiskey
2 parts (1 oz.) Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth
3-4 dashes Angostura aromatic bitters

Yesterday was a snow day for me, so I decided to whip up examples of David Embury’s major classic cocktails. There are six he says everybody ought to be able to make, as a basis for cocktail knowledge, and for further experimentation. I realize I’ve put up plenty of innovations and outlandish drinks, but the really essential standby cocktails haven’t gotten much airtime. That changes now.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t make all of them. A trot out to the corner store (good on them, being open) got me the citrus I needed, but I was still short the Daiquiri’s light rum and applejack for the Jack Rose. The others will show up as I load them in, all tagged appropriately.

I started with the Manhattan, one of the most famous and most accessible classic cocktails. The Manhattan is that rare drink that is not merely more, but something else entirely than the sum of its parts. A well-mixed Manhattan does not taste like whiskey or vermouth. It tastes like a Manhattan.

The recipe you see here is a bit of a poor-man’s Manhattan. Old Overholt is perfectly serviceable, but it is bottom-shelf, by rye standards. Now, fortunately, rye whiskey is like applejack, brandy, gin, and dark rum, in that the cheapest stuff you can possibly find will be miles ahead of the glorified ethanol that comes packaged as bottom-shelf vodka, light rum, or nonspecific “whiskey.” I’ll indicate in later posts on the Manhattan what price point we’re talking about. The Manhattan, like many of the classics, falls into the “easy to learn, hard to master” category. It can be varied greatly.

For now, though, let’s talk about the poor-man’s Manhattan. Old Overholt and Jim Beam are the two cheapest ryes on the market. Expect to pay $15 for a fifth. I’ve seen them anywhere from $11 to $22, but $15 is a good estimate. I happened to have Old Overholt, although I tend to prefer the Jim Beam, which is slightly more complex. A tenth-size bottle of Martini & Rossi will hit around $7 or $8 at the most. It is the cheapest vermouth on the market, but as with rye, cheap vermouth is still plenty drinkable.

Never be stingy with the non-whiskey ingredients in a Manhattan, but especially when you’re using bargain ingredients. I say 3-4 dashes here. The bourgeois Manhattan would call for 2-3. The royal Manhattan uses such good stuff the bitters falls to one dash. The vermouth percentage also falls as the whiskey gets better - but I reiterate, don’t be stingy. If your Manhattan is drier than about a 3:1 whiskey:vermouth ratio, you’d be better off with an Old Fashioned.

The end result is extremely drinkable, and a good example of how to do cocktails on a budget. If you (and your guests) are used to drinking nothing but highballs, the Manhattan is a great transition drink. Just be careful with your vermouth, which will eventually spoil if left out. Keep it in the fridge, and you should be fine.

"The World According to Alcohol" →

A tip of the hat to the Philippines, for their apparently massive levels of brandy consumption; and to Clare, for sending in this link with the note, “HCS might like to know.”